She Said (2022): A near triumph, stopped short of brilliance by its tick-box activism
Maria Schrader, in her new film She Said starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as famed journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey brings the #MeToo fight to Weinstein’s own medium. Schrader excels by letting the Weinstein story speak for itself and she does so by obeying one truth throughout. Rape culture is rampant and omnipresent therefore, it has the power to trigger and damage many.
Schrader’s film language is uncomplicated, and despite the film’s occasionally clunky dialogue (note particularly when Twohey is asked to help actresses who are victims of sexual assault) Empire magazine rightly championed this as one of the film’s key merits. To quote Empire, this story needs no embellishment, ‘the cold, hard reality of what happened is enough’. Tackling what is referred to in the film as an obscenely ‘pervasive’ yet ‘hard to address’ topic, Schrader’s retelling of Weinstein’s downfall focuses on the journalistic success and #MeToo, as we see Twohey and Kantor journey from the beginning to the end of how they got and published this story.
Schrader radically neglects visualising Weinstein’s attacks on women. She instead highlights his violence through flashbacks which envisage the immediate aftermath of various instances of sexual assault. In doing so, Schrader protects her viewers, many of whom could be triggered by visualisations of sexual violence. In short, she creates a no less horrifying but more watchable representation of Weinstein’s crimes by maintaining the respect of the survivors of his acts. Detaching from this year’s other releases (notably Blonde and Luckiest Girl Alive), all that is shown bar a somewhat arthouse interpretation of Ambra Battilana’s voice recording of Weinstein is what matters; the horrific aftermath, the fact that after the traumatising event, survivors still must live and cope, all while either being side-lined or continually manipulated by the industry. The reason for this is simple, Schrader’s primary concern is not the violence of Weinstein or indeed the man himself, it is instead the myriad impacts of his violence on the in-numerable survivors of his acts – the ‘#MeToo’ and ‘She said’ if you will, that triggered Weinstein’s downfall.
The Independent wrote Weinstein’s absence as a negative, citing that this obfuscation kept his place as a ‘villain too powerful to face’, but this is simply not the case - he has been ‘faced’ as it were. ‘She said’ follows the story of how journalists catalysed his demise, it is, faults and all, a feminist success story. The crux of it is, he is a villain, and a terrifying one at that, but one who was taken down by two journalists who provided the survivors of his tyrannic coercion, violence, assault and rape, a platform which created a safety net of other women.
Diminishing the success of the film’s simplicity however is Schrader’s somewhat overbearing attempts at intertwining rape culture with other feminist politics in what feels like her efforts to create a ‘fashionably’ feminist text. Other feminist politics do of course intertwine with Weinstein, (i.e. intersectional identity politics affecting how various victims were treated before and after Weinstein’s outing), but the manner in which Schrader has done this, begs the question of whether she was gap-filling in order for this film to tick the ‘definitely feminist’ box.
Twohey and Kantor’s positions as mothers for instance, are given a lot of care and attention, and while I have no doubt it was not easy for them to write and research such a piece while mothering, this choice didn’t seem to add anything to the film. Certainly, there is a place for activism in film regarding issues like Twohey’s struggles with post-natal depression, but here, it felt out of place. This being said, there is one powerful moment involving motherhood, where Kantor’s daughter asks if she is supporting women who have been raped, and shockingly knows the word and has heard it used. Yet, I do believe this would have worked as a standalone scene.
Furthermore, Brad Pitt’s position as executive producer has also perhaps rightly created controversy. Gwyneth Paltrow has been very open in the past regarding how much Pitt helped her in the aftermath of her experience with Weinstein, which I have no doubts is why he wished to be involved with the film. But as an audience member questioned to screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz after the BFI screening of this film, amongst his more recent abuse allegations, this justifiably, has been noted by many as being an odd choice.
These choices and not forgetting the moments of clunky dialogue and melodrama unfortunately have permeated the rest of the text bringing forward the question of whether this film was made too soon. Rushing to the box office as it were, I wonder if this film has needed to fill gaps in order to be the first, (likely not only) epic tale of Weinstein’s demise. There are many ways this story can be told, and despite Schrader’s merits in the delicacy of her approach to the subject, her pacing, and warranted ‘rawness’ of film language, I left the two screenings of this film I attended thinking others may do it better. As the Evening Standard said, I too wonder, in the hands of other directors such as Emerald Fennell, what a Weinstein film may look like, and whether it could be more impressive.
A near win, therefore, has been halted by its over-hurried rush to our screens, and attempts at ‘perfect’ ‘fashionable’ feminism. I must commend this film for celebrating the whistle-blowers, and it also is, faults and all, certainly a healing tool for survivors; a celebration of their strength, as it were. Schrader does deserve credit for creating an un-triggering piece, which plainly sticks to its story. She Said undoubtably however, raises a problem with the contemporary industry – it brings to light Hollywood’s current entanglement with ‘fashionable feminism’. Particularly it highlights the impacts of this on what should be radically feminist texts; the unneeded elements of motherhood cling to ‘#girlboss’ feminism, while Brad Pitt’s place as executive producer provides literal evidence that we all still must work with alleged abusers. Its tick box activism especially does call into question how much radical change can take place, when the industry is still so halted by the ‘fashionable’ feminism of the last 15 or so years. The film is enjoyable, and surprisingly fast-paced, but certainly it leaves questions of what else in film can be created from Weinstein’s downfall, and indeed other horrifying tales of sexual tyranny.
